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PaaSage: Model-based Cloud Platform Upperware

Name:

Philippe Massonet

Organisation:

CETIC

Topics recommended for the 2016-2017 Work Programme:

The following research topics have been identified during the PaaSage project, but will not be addressed within the project. The research topics could very well be addressed in further research projects.

Optimised Cloud data partitioning and replication: The PaaSage platform automates the deployment of applications based on a deployment model. A key decision in a cloud deployment is how to partition and deploy the data between different cloud providers. PaaSage provides no decision support for partitioning and replicating data. Optimising data partitioning and replication in the cloud is a challenging research topic. When replicating data across different cloud providers it is important that data consistency be taken into account.

Industry standards for publishing monitoring data: The PaaSage platform supports multi cloud scenario where applications can be deployed on different clouds. However to be able to compare monitoring data across clouds, industry standards for monitored data should be available.

Security service level objectives: Security metrics are not widely available from cloud providers, so it is currently difficult to monitor cloud provider security. More research on security level objectives in the form of industry standards is needed.

Projects major results:

The first version of the PaaSage platform provides the following features:

Model based cloud deployment: Models are central to the PaaSage platform. The PaaSage platform takes as input a deployment model of the application to be deployed in the cloud. The deployment model is independent of any specific cloud platform.

Optimised Cloud deployment per component: the PaaSage platform uses models of cloud providers to find the optimal cloud deployment on a selected set of cloud providers. The deployment decision is taken for each component individually. The resulting deployment may involve a single cloud provider or may involve several cloud providers.

Cross cloud monitoring and adaptation: service level objectives are monitored by the PaaSage platform and can trigger adaptations to the deployment in order to respect agreed service level objectives.

Secure and privacy aware cross cloud deployments: the deployment models include security models of cloud providers. The security model identifies the security controls and security level objectives that are supported by cloud providers. They are taken into account as constraints when calculating the optimal deployment.

Potential exploitation strategy:

PaaSage aims to be a sustainable platform over time and to involve users that share interest in its continued evolution. To this end all the software and tools of PaaSage are being delivered as open source. The industrial partners of the PaaSage consortium are providing requirements based on their case studies. These requirements are driving the development of the PaaSage deployment model language and the platform. The case studies cover different application domains in order to ensure that the PaaSage platform applies across different application domains. The industrial partners of the PaaSage consortium represent these different application domains. They are the initial exploitation partners of the PaaSage platform.

An update since the last Concertation meeting (March 2014):

Interoperability and portability across cloud providers are key objectives of the PaaSage platform. The PaaSage platform support multi-cloud scenario, where deployed applications can be undeployed and redeployed from one cloud to another by the PaaSage platform. PaaSage deployment models are defined in a provider independent modelling language. The same deployment model can thus be used by the PaaSage platform to deploy on different cloud providers. Internally the PaaSage platform transforms the cloud provider independent deployment model into a cloud provider specific model. It uses the Cloudify library (http://getcloudify.org/) to create cloud specific deployments. For the security model, PaaSage is using industry standards on security controls from the Cloud Security Alliance (https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/ccm/) so that cloud provider security can be matched with security controls that are required by an application.